I took the one less travelled by…

Fortune Favours the Bold!

This is the story of the little soufflé that could. If there is an ongoing theme of my kitchen it would be disaster. Do you remember the spanakopita where I dumped all of the “feta juice” all over the floor? Or the dozens of other baking and cooking experiments with missing ingredients, etc. This, combined with the soufflé’s reputation for being a tricky dish, made it an unlikely choice for my ladies’ luncheon. But then I found this recipe from Laura Calder, my favourite food network personality. Laura said it was easy, and why would Laura lie to me?

The first thing that I did wrong was that I cut up the onion before putting it in milk. But that’s okay, it didn’t upset anything, though it did slow me down a little. While the milk and goodies were steeping I greased and parmeseaned my casserole dish.

Then I grated too much cheddar; the recipe called for 20g, and I grated nearly 300g. Oh well, you can never have too much cheese right?

From there I combined the flour, butter, extra cheese and herbs all into a pot. So far I was more or less on track. That’s when I almost went off the rails. I had separated out 3 eggs, so I had 3 egg whites and 1 yolk. I was supposed to add the yolk to my concoction, but I got confused and added the egg whites instead.

By this time Penelope and I were both standing over the pot trying to decide what to do; should we beat the cheese mixture, should we throw it all out and start over? That’s when W arrived. She told us to separate 3 more eggs and beat those.

Once the eggs whites formed stiff peaks W folded them into the original mixture, and then it went into the oven for 30 minutes.

And the result? Perfection. Very tasty, and so exciting for every one of us that day. This just proves that a good recipe and the help of good friends means that anything is possible, even salvaging a soufflé when you make a [bunch of] huge mistake[s].

I think it’s impressive that it still came together in the end! The chemistry of baking is such a mystery to me I probably would have started over. =) So I’m glad you had the guts to move forward. It looks so poofy and delightful!